Silly Fangirl! Star Wars is for Kids!

By Lisa Fary

In the wake of the Phantom Menace fiasco of 1999, George Lucas insisted that his movie was for children. I now have scientific evidence that the Phantom Menace is certainly not for kids (It’s scientific because I followed the steps of the scientific method while experimenting on my little cousins. Wheee! I’m a mad scientist!)

Step 1: Define the Question

Which episode should be used to introduce kids to Star Wars: Episode 1 The Phantom Menace or Episode 4 A New Hope?

John and I, eager to ignite the geek flames within our cousins Cameron (age 6) and Brady (age 4), had already given them stacks of comic books, superhero t-shirts, and Superman action figures while visiting at Christmas this year. They wandered into the living room while the grown-ups were watching the new Star Trek and sat wide eyed, loving what they saw.

We learned that, although they owned lightsaber toys, the boys had never seen Star Wars. We simply couldn’t leave without remedying that. But, where should we start Cam and Brady on their Star Wars journey?

Step 2: Do Background Research

My instinct was to start with A New Hope because. . . well. . . that’s how we’d done it when we were kids. However, the numeration of the movies indicate that the order in which we’d seen them was not the order in which they were meant to be seen.

We also considered George Lucas’ insistence following the release of The Phantom Menace that his movies were for kids. Aspects that annoyed us as adults (Jar Jar Binks, Kid Vader, stupid dialogue, etc) would conceivably be embraced by the young minds making up George’s intended audience.

Then it occurred to us that this generation growing up now don’t have to suffer emotional distress instigated by the prequels, like we had suffered. To these kids, there’s always been six Star Wars movies. They could start with Episode 1 and not lose anything, not go back to the original trilogy without the feeling of seeing the prom queen thirty years later working the graveyard shift at a Waffle House.

That’s how George would want it, right?

Step 3: Construct a Hypothesis

Viewing Episode 1 The Phantom Menace before viewing the original trilogy will prevent frustration, annoyance, and boredom with the prequels in the test subjects.

Step 4: Test with an Experiment

A copy of The Phantom Menace was procured. In case it didn’t work out, I’d also bought a copy of The Gas We Pass: The Story of Farts should the boys be disappointed/ bored by the movie. The four of us sat down on a rainy Sunday and watched.

Step Five: Analyze the Data and Draw a Conclusion

The Data
The data really starts with my purchase of the DVD. I hid the cover as much as possible, wanting to defend the purchase to everyone who gazed upon it. “It’s an experiment! For science!” I shouted in my mind. “It’s for my little cousins! They won’t hate Jar Jar Binks! George says it’s for kids!”

While watching, my stomach dropped at the opening crawl:

Nothing says “kids movie” like taxation, trade routes, and debate. John read the crawl aloud for Cam and Brady. The boys stared blankly.

“You said this was about a little boy!” Cam exclaimed. He hung on for several squirmy minutes with the promise that little Ani would appear.

Jar Jar Binks showed up instead.

“I don’t understand anything he’s saying. This is boring,” Cam declared, heading downstairs to play Super Mario Bros. on Wii. No amount of insistence that Ani would be on screen soon and there would be monsters and a race and robots convinced him to stick around.

Brady, the four year old, hung on for about forty minutes, periodically asking, “Is that a bad guy? Are those good guys? That jar guy is really hard to understand what he’s saying.” He was engaged by the Naboo planet core scene, even asking us to rewind it a couple of times so he could get a better look at the monsters. Brady determined that one of them was a giant piranha.

The Trade Federation came back on screen. “Those bad guys are boring,” Brady said. From that point forward, whenever the Trade Federation guys were on screen, Brady took the opportunity to tell us everything he knew about animals.

“Have you ever seen a baby marmoset?” he asked. “They fit on your finger.” Then bears, sharks, dinosaurs, monkeys. We tried directing Brady’s attention. “Oh, look! They’re escaping the planet! They’re in space!” I exclaimed. “And now they’re. . . . talking. . . in space.”

Brady sighed. He fiddled with the plastic Tyrannosaurus Rex he had in the chair with him.

Finally, almost forty minutes in, Qui-gon Jin and the gang arrived on Tatooine. “Look at that guy! What is he?” John said when Watto appeared, trying to engage. Brady sighed again as Anakin ran out and started talking. With subtitles.

“What are those words?” Brady asked.

“Um. Subtitles,” I said. “When a person in a movie is talking in another language, the subtitles tell you what they’re saying.”

“Oh.” He went back to the T-Rex.

“Brady,” John said. “You don’t have to watch this if you don’t like it.”

“Yeah. It’s pretty boring. I’m sorry.”

The Conclusion

All told, I did an excellent job of not polluting the test subjects before or during our viewing of the Phantom Menace. Every negative, snarky comment that snuck up my tongue was bitten back.

I deserve an effing medal.

We can’t say this is an issue of the boys being too young; I was Cam’s age when I saw Return of the Jedi and Brady’s age when I saw A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. Besides, they dug Star Trek and asked questions about it for days afterward.

We also can’t say it’s an issue of a short attention span. Both boys will usually sit down for movies. They’ll sit down to be read to.

Lack of imagination isn’t the culprit here, either. After we turned off the movie, Brady and I played Secret Agents for the next two hours, running around the house, defeating imaginary bosses, giant spiders, and bad fairies. He needed no suggestions from me, instead dreaming up everything on his own, on the fly, periodically exclaiming, “Secret Lisa! We have to keep going!” That kid is plenty imaginative.

Considering that we didn’t make it even half way through The Phantom Menace, I can safely say my hypothesis is grossly incorrect. The kids were frustrated and annoyed by it. They were bored by it. They didn’t understand what was going on and there was no simple way to explain it to them. Kids may get more subtlety than we give them credit for, but it’s still got to be visceral. They should be able to figure out who the good guys and bad guys are on their own. What’s going on in the Phantom Menace is beyond young kids and too stupid for the rest of humanity.

No matter what George Lucas says, no matter how many gadgets, Jar Jars and Darth Mauls he gets in there, a two hour and fifteen movie about bureaucracy isn’t for kids.

John and I plan to try again next time we visit. Only next time, we’re going with Episode 4 A New Hope and will simply avoid the prequels all together.

At least I won’t have to try to explain midi-chlorians.

Lisa Fary is a graduate of the creative writing program at Florida State University and holds an advanced degree in Special Education. Her earliest influences are Princess Leia, Rainbow Bright, Astronaut Barbie, and her 6th grade teacher, Ms. Palmer. She’s angry that it’s almost 2010 and she still doesn’t have a hovercraft, but will accept a jetpack as consolation. That jetpack had better be pink with a rhinestone monogram.

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